Survival News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

We’re currently in the midst of the winter season, when the temperatures drop and the night grows darker and longer, clawing away more and more precious minutes of sunlight. It’s the perfect time of the year for True Detective: Night Country, the fourth season of the crime drama anthology starring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis. This season has already done a lot to differentiate itself from past storylines, with nods to the supernatural interspersed with prominent callbacks to the series’ first season.

Palworld took the world by storm following its early access launch on January 19. It peaked at over 2.1 million concurrent players on Steam, selling over 12 million copies on that platform alone and amassing at least 7 million more purchases via Xbox Game Pass. That means you’ve probably played it at this point, even if you aren’t playing many other video games right now. Thankfully, the melting pot — or derivative, depending on who you ask — design of Palworld makes it a gateway game to several other amazing titles.

If you’ve played Call of Duty Warzone since its release, you’ve seen plenty of oddities, from glitches to overpowered weapons. One that seems to keep coming back, though, is players’ ability to survive for extended periods in the gas.

"I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee," is probably one of the most recognizable quotes from any video game, despite only being a throwaway bark in Skyrim. In fact, the line is so popular on the internet, it even reached a medieval expert who decided to seriously break down the mechanics of such an injury in historical context.

Studio Wildcard has released a major update to the ARK Development Kit, introducing more options for modders to shape their experiences. Additions include a custom cosmetics system, the ability to transfer items, and a Simple Game Framework.

The video game industry is one that has been built on trends. If a game reaches escape velocity and becomes a big hit, it’s inevitable that others will be lining up to get a slice of that turkey. This has had some unfortunate consequences.

“Never work with children or animals,” goes the old showbiz adage. First-time filmmaker Andrew Cumming technically abided by that wisdom… though “creature feature set in the Stone Age” might soon belong on the avoid-for-your-own-sanity list.

As I take my first steps out of a cave, surveying a familiar-looking plateau draped in nothing but a loincloth, I suddenly crash into a bulbous, bleating ball of cotton-wool. Half sheep, half sentient ball of fluff, it lets out a startled meep, curling into a ball and rolling head-first towards me.

The original Earthlock was an unashamedly old-school JRPG that played well but offered little in the way of innovation. However, the game benefited from a pretty major overhaul in 2018 when the development team at Snowcastle Games added a load of extra features for the Switch port. Adding these all onto the original version as a free upgrade was a move that generated a lot of goodwill and therefore the announcement of a sequel was met with plenty of excitement. Earthlock 2 is due in 2024 but to tide us over we have a surprising spin-off in the form of Ikonei Island.

Hooded Horse and Eremite Games have revealed their plans for 2023’s survival town builder, Against the Storm. It includes two free updates to further polish the game, as well as DLC with additional content.

The Subnautica developer, Unknown World Entertainment, has clarified comments made by its publisher, Krafton, about the next game in this underwater franchise. 

Steam Next Fest is back for another round of non-stop demos, including one survival game with more in common with Palworld than just its genre. 

At the demand of hordes of hungry vampires, V Rising is coming to PlayStation 5.

Palworld developer Pocketpair is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in order to keep up with server demand, and it's now simultaneously trying to hire enough people to maintain what's still one of the most viral games in the world. 

A player can find tons of cute or capable Pals on a tour through Palworld’s Palpagos Islands, but in order to fill out their Paldeck, they’ll need to dabble with breeding. Breeding is a surprisingly deep part of Palworld, and it’s quickly become a rabbit hole — or a Caprity hole, if you will — for my group on our shared server.

I’ve spent the last ten days fully immersed in Palworld. If you are blissfully unaware, Palworld is a survival game that borrows elements from popular survival games like Rust, a little “Souls-like” inspiration, some Breath of the Wild, and, of course, Pokemon. Is the whole more significant than the sum of its parts? Is Palworld worthy of the hype? Well, fortunately, we are here to let you know!

These days games suffering last-minute delays has become routine, but don’t worry – while the release date for Nightingale is changing, it’s not a delay. Today the Inflexion Games, the new Edmonton-based studio founded by former BioWare general manager Aaryn Flynn, announced that Nightingale will actually be coming out two days earlier than expected. Wisely, this change has been made to ensure the co-op survival game will be running smoothly by the weekend, which is likely when most people will be jumping in.

Subnautica 2 developer Unknown Worlds has moved to address fan concerns following publisher Krafton's announcement that the underwater survival sequel will be a multiplayer title adopting a «game-as-a-service model».

Welcome to Koji Village, where the sneaky iLLANG has been causing quite the commotion. But fear not because it’s time for us to band together and end their mischief. It’s a social deduction game where you work together to find the sneaky “Illang” (wolf) hiding among the villagers.

Have you ever watched the anonymous soldiers of a sci-fi movie get obliterated by aliens and thought to yourself, “I could do better”? Helldivers 2 is Arrowhead Game Studios’ invitation to brave players dying to experience the chaotic fun of facing seemingly impossible odds.

Hello, PlayStation Blog readers! I’m Zhenyu Li, the producer of Zenless Zone Zero. I’m excited to share with you the exclusive announcement that Zenless Zone Zero will be coming to PS5. This blog post is your gateway into learning about the game and the adventure it will bring.

Hi everyone, I’m Samar, Associate Game Director at Vertigo Games. We couldn’t be more excited to reveal our next project during today’s State of Play. We’re proud to say that, with the support of Deep Silver, for the last two and a half years we’ve been working to bring the post-apocalyptic world of Metro to PS VR2 in 2024.

In a world where we're being bombarded by constant hype about AI, getting to mow down some chrome-plated baddies is kind of cathartic. Playing through the first several missions of Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance, I found myself leading a ragtag band of human survivors trying to evade hostile machines in a slightly clunky but overall competent squad-based RTS. And there are some interesting ideas glimmering in the gaps beneath its synthetic flesh.

On January 4, I received an email I had both been anticipating and dreading for months. My copy of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, one of my most anticipated games of 2024, had dropped into my inbox. Usually, that moment would give me a jolt of energy. I love critiquing games that have real substance, and I was still chewing on 2020’s unforgettable Yakuza: Like a Dragon several years later. That RPG tells a thematically rich story about an unlikely hero finding his confidence amid a quest to take on Japan’s criminal underworld.

Gears of War's creator has commented on the success of Palworld, revealing that he once pitched his own Pokemon-like at Epic Games "many years ago." 

Studio Wildcard has released more details about Ark: Survival Ascended’s upcoming ‘Custom Cosmetic’ modding system, and it’s been confirmed that it’ll start rolling it out this week.

Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski has said that Microsoft would be “smart” to enlist him as a consultant on the franchise.

When catching firearm-wielding creatures in Palworld, a low chance of success usually deters any would-be monster-tamers from trying. But one explorer managed to capture a wildly overleveled creature and beat the whopping 3-in-10,000 odds. 

There are a variety of different types of Merchant spread across the islands of Palpagos. From Seeds to Ammo and everything between, there’s one who sells what you need. Here’s the rundown of all static Merchants, where to find them and what they sell. 

Tekken 8 finally gives fans a definitive answer about whether or not Kazuya is actually evil or if he's being controlled and influenced by the devil gene.

Season 3 is here, which means new cosmetics! Your Rogue's cruelty could know no bounds with The Callous Adversary! While we don't know for certain when thess packages will rotate out of stock, what we do know is that the shop refreshes happen daily at approximately 10 am PDT, so stay tuned — we may have new cosmetic options soon! Premium Currency in Diablo 4

Even in an early access state, Palworld boasts a massive world map you can explore either solo or with a group of friends. While there are tons of sights to see and Pals to capture and put to work at your base, a major portion of your time will be spent on gathering crafting materials. Unlike Paldium, which can be found all over, other resources like coal can’t be found in any region of the map. If you were thinking you might be able to cheat the system a bit and simply buy some, guess again, because no vendor has any of these black lumps in stock, even the Black Marketeers. If you’re desperate for some coal, we can point you in the right direction.

Link has gone through many strange transformations in , taking advantage of various types of magic to advance in his quests. However, although all of these changes have been necessary for him to succeed, not all of them have been entirely voluntary; instead, the hero of Hyrule has been cursed to take on different forms on more than one occasion. Moreover, regardless of their (sometimes ironic) utility, it cannot be denied that these transformations and their respective triggers can be very strange.

Fromsoftwarian world-building sometimes has centuries explained away in item descriptions for random rusty spoons, which makes hunting down all the lore nuggets just as satisfying as surviving bosses. One YouTuber has done the heavy lifting on Elden Ring for us, thankfully, but it's also taken them over 35 hours to do so.

Palworld trainers are already preparing for the upcoming player-versus-player modes, most notably by hoarding 300 Pal Spheres that can nab other players' creature friends. 

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for season 2 of the U.S. version of The Traitors through episode 5.]

The Like A Dragon series has never been afraid to make cute little nods to certain characters and side quests that have appeared in previous games, with minigames such as Like A Dragon Gaiden's colosseum fights usually crammed with references to several past titles. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth is no exception, which gives us a cameo from a couple of characters those of you who have played the Judgment spinoff series will be very familiar with.

Once you get your footing in Palworld, with all its different Peal types, guns, and survival mechanics, you will realize that a good chunk of your attention needs to be placed on making sure you have all the necessary materials. This isn’t a game where you can just grind XP and brute force your way to victory. In Palworld, crafting is king, and that means you need materials. A lot of them, such as Paldium, can eventually be automated at your base with the help of some Pals, but specific things like leather aren’t as easy to stockpile. This is amaterial that only drops from specific Pals, so let’s run through what you need to do to get some Leather in Palworld.

Enshrouded is an early access survival-crafter RPG that has the unfortunate fate of debuting right next to Palworld, a similarly structured game enjoying massively viral success. However, while the appeal of Palworld is immediately obvious, it takes a little bit of digging to find what makes Enshrouded shine.

Baldur's Gate 3 speedrunners have already been achieving ridiculous times largely by abusing Shadowheart, but a new indignity inflicted upon everyone's favorite moody cleric has brought that world record down to under 20 minutes.

Blizzard Entertainment's survival game, which it informally announced in 2022, was reportedly canceled over engine issues during its six years of development, according to a new Bloomberg report. This report follows yesterday's news that Microsoft is laying off 1,900 employees across its Xbox, Activision Blizzard, and ZeniMax divisions. Alongside this news, Blizzard president Mike Ybarra also announced he was departing from the company, and we learned the aforementioned survival game had been canceled. 

Not even ten days after its release, a dedicated Palworld player has taken it upon themselves to create a Palpedia that could rival the Pokedex. 

Tributes from developers have been flooding in for Blizzard's unannounced survival game following its cancellation. 

Palworld's upcoming player-versus-player options won't suffer from "the same pitfalls" that irk other survival games, according to developer Pocketpair.

Following the huge layoffs (over 1,900 employees) announced yesterday by Microsoft across teams at Blizzard and Xbox, it was also revealed that Blizzard's survival game Odyssey had been canceled.

There's no stopping to Pocketpair's hit title as Palworld is currently the most popular game on Xbox Game Pass.

One Palworld player has bred a "zooming dragon," and it might be the fastest creature in the game to date.

Tekken 8's story mode and character episodes finally clear up what happened to Jun Kazama, after years of fans thinking that she died at the hands of Ogre in Tekken 3.

When I watch horror movies, I’m always convinced I can do much better than the clueless protagonists. Survive the Killer let me test my survival skills and, unsurprisingly, they weren’t as great as I expected. Playing the role of a murderer suited me better, so I needed a good knife. 

Open-world survival crafting adventure game Omega Crafter will launch in Early Access for PC via Steam on March 28, developer Preferred Netwroks announced. A limited-time public demo will be available from today until February 13.

Earlier this morning, Microsoft dropped a bomb, announcing the cutting of 1900 jobs from their Xbox and Activision Blizzard teams – nearly a 10th of their gaming division. It seems Blizzard was hit particularly hard by these layoffs, with president Mike Ybarra resigning and their upcoming survival game “Odyssey” being canceled. Well, we may now know a bit more about who was on the chopping block, and it’s not good news for those still holding onto the dream of physically owning their games.

In early 2023, it was revealed that Blizzard had been working on a completely brand-new survival game based on an original IP. It was later rumored that the game would be called Odyssey and would feature a "cartoony" art style similar to that of Overwatch. It was all very exciting, especially since Activision Blizzard is almost allergic to experimenting with new IP these days, but unfortunately, we'll never actually get to play Odyssey.

The development team behind Blizzard's now-cancelled survival game, reportedly called Odyssey, is seemingly among the teams dramatically impacted by the layoffs at Microsoft today.

It’s been a reasonably long time since a game latched onto my innermost sense of childlike wonder – that is, until I lost 30 hours of my week building a fortress town in Enshrouded’s meadows before I even started its main quest. This action-RPG survival sim draws a mish-mash of inspirations from games like Valheim, Minecraft, The Elder Scrolls, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and all those ideas come together in a way that’s already engrossing at its Early Access launch. Its gob-smackingly gorgeous high-fantasy art style, vast open world, intelligent crafting systems, seemingly limitless base building, and satisfying character customization are impressive, but also marred by a few bugs – both literal and figurative – a lackluster story filled with decent-at-best puzzle design, and clunky action combat that’s off to a middling start. And yet, across 62 hours soaking in its rustic fantasy charm, it was easy to forgive those hitches and gleefully get lost in its depths with a friend.

We all know that Palworld is so much more than just “Pokemon with guns.” Even ignoring all the crafting, breeding, and survival aspects, there are way more than just regular guns to unlock and make. You have melee options, spears, bows, handguns, explosives, and more at your disposal. If you want to keep up with the difficulty curve and hunt down the higher-level Pals, and especially the Legendaries, then you need the strongest weapons in your arsenal. Here are all the weapons currently in Palworld and how you can unlock and craft them.

While Palworld does take a lot of cues from its obvious inspiration, Pokemon, it isn’t simply a clone. Apart from catching and battling colorful monsters of various types, this is also a survival game with tons of building and crafting elements. Most of the early items you can craft will need basic materials, but when you start getting to the good stuff, Ancient Civilization Parts will be required more and more. While there are a few ways to get this resource, it isn’t easy to come by and won’t happen naturally for most people. If you’re stuck roaming around Palpagos looking for them, here’s how to get Ancient Civilization Parts in no time.

Enshrouded is a brand new fantasy survival adventure where players explore the world of Embervale, which has been invaded by a mysterious corrupting fog.

Early access survival game Enshrouded lets up to 16 players take part in a dedicated server at the same time, but those players are now discovering that if even a single one of them completes a quest objective, it completes for everyone - even if they're not actually online.

Polish developer People Can Fly, which is arguably best known for making the third-person co-op shooter Outridersand first-person-shooter Bulletstorm, has confirmed that it’s laid off a number of its staff. A spokesperson described the situation as “unfortunate.”

Following the news that Microsoft is laying off around 1,900 people from its video game workforce, there is further confirmation that a survival game that was in the works over at Blizzard Entertainment has now been canceled. 

Room for another mass layoff post, before we end the day? This one is actually two separate stories but in a bid to conserve resources and make our frontpage slightly less depressing to read, I am going to roll them together. Black Forest Games, the Embracer-owned creators of the Destroy All Humans! Remake, are reportedly cutting 50% of their workforce - around 50-60 people. Outriders developers People Can Fly, meanwhile, have laid off 30 developers who were working on an unannounced Square Enix game.

The Pokémon Company finally put out a statement addressing the similarities between the designs of some creatures from its namesake franchise and Pocketpair’s viral monster-collecting survival crafting game Palworld. The company says it is investigating the matter.

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The Pokémon Company has broken its silence regarding Steam mega-hit Palworld, and said it’s investigating if it infringes on its IP rights.

Blizzard Entertainment’s untitled survival game set in an original universe is no more. In the wake of Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and amid sweeping layoffs across various Xbox gaming teams, the company has canceled the project, according to a report from the Verge.

The Snorlax has awoken. The Pokémon Company broke its silence on Palworld, the smash hit Pokémon-inspired survival game, on Thursday, saying it intended to investigate the game and “take appropriate measures” if it judges that its intellectual property rights have been infringed.

An Enshrouded player has learned the hard way after three long hours of using a pickaxe to build a basement that there's another tool intended to do the same thing in much less time. 

Palworld arrived on Steam less than a week ago, but themed gaming PC builds are already showing up online. While you won’t need a fancy new graphics card to hit the critter collecting survival game’s recommended specs, the new line up by UK builder CCL Computers comes armed with a new gen Nvidia GPU and one of my favorite Intel i5 CPUs. Oh, and while I’m not really that into the look of Pocketpair’s uncanny pocket monsters, these machines are a weird blend of cute and unsettling.

According to IGN, Microsoft has fired 1,900 employees from its video game divisions including Xbox and Activision Blizzard. The layoffs affect almost 9% of the 22,000 employees at the company. In a memo to staff, Microsoft Gaming CEO claims the layoffs come after leadership at Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard identified areas of overlap following the recent acquisition of Activision, Blizzard, and King.

Alongside the announcement of 1,900 layoffs and the departure of Blizzard President Mike Ybarra and Co-founder Allen Adham, Blizzard's unannounced survival game has been cancelled. Revealed shortly after news of the Microsoft acquisition in January of 2022, little information about the game was ever released to the public aside from vague recruitment posts, though the abandonment of unfinished projects is not unheard of, as the cancellation of the ambitious MMO Titan famously led to the development and release of Overwatch in 2016. As reported by the Verge, Microsoft Game Content and Studios President Booty says Microsoft will be “shifting some of the people working on it to one of several promising new projects Blizzard has in the early stages of development.”

Microsoft is laying off around 8% of its Gaming Workforce, affecting game developers across Xbox, ZeniMax Media, and the newly acquired Activision Blizzard.

After The Pokemon Company revealed it would "investigate" games like Palworld for copyright infringement, the survival game's fans are confident it won't amount to much. 

After 300 hours of work and $1,500 spent on assets, a solo indie developer has released a parody trailer of The Day Before that has come to be a cautionary tale of being wary of overpromising marketing. 

Microsoft has announced that it will be laying off 1,900 members of its 22,000-person gaming division. 

Update, 9:51 a.m. ET, 1/25/24:

Rewards from new boss encounters, hero skins, and game-changing mods are all available in when you complete different challenges in the roguelike No Return mode. The survival missions your chosen character can attempt in a run could unlock additional features. It may take time to meet every goal, but each challenge offers an exciting opportunity.

A new update has been rolled out for the Steam version of Pocketpair’s survival and crafting game Palworld, which, as well as a couple of bug fixes, contains “countermeasures against various cheats and exploits.”

Enshrouded, the other notable survival game to be launching into early access this week, puts a soulslike spin on its combat. But while that might imply Fromsoft-style difficulty, players are already saying that it's too easy to live up to that comparison.

Dune: Awakening, the upcoming survival MMO based on Frank Herbert's sci-fi masterpiece, has shown off its base-building systems for the first time.

The Pokemon Company seems to plan to "investigate" Palworld over the possibility of copyright infringement.